PS-C35-6: NATIONWIDE TREND ANALYSIS OF ADDING SALT TO MEALS IN JAPAN: COOKPAD DATA, 2010–2014

Abstract

Objective: Numerous studies have revealed that dietary salt intake is associated with blood pressure and mortality. Adding salt to food as a seasoning is deeply rooted in Japanese culture, which results in that the amount of salt in the diet in Japan remains high. Cookpad is one of the popular cooking-recipe sharing websites globally, where the amount of seasonings can be quantitatively extracted. This epidemiological study aimed to investigate a nationwide trend of adding salt to meals using real-world data in Japan. Design and method: This is a large-scale retrospective study using Cookpad data from January 2010 to December 2014, provided by Informatics Research Data Repository, National Institute of Informatics. The amount of salt added as the seasoning was calculated in each recipe. The “Salt Seasoning Rate” was defined as the percentage of recipes that contained salt as an ingredient out of all recipes. We also expressed the “Low-sodium Ingredient Rate” as the percentage of all recipes that contains low sodium food or ingredient. Additionally, the salt added per person per meal was used as “Salt Seasoning Amount” to quantify the amount of salt added as a seasoning. Year-to-year differences in salt seasoning rate and the amount of salt seasoning per person per meal from 2010 to 2014 were analyzed using the Cochrane-Armitage test for percentage trends and the Jonckheere-Terpstra trend test for salt amount. Results: Overall, 1,119,555 recipes were identified from January 2010 to December 2014 and stratified by the year of publication. A total of 494,216 recipes (44.1%) containing salt as an ingredient were extracted. The Salt Seasoning Rate trended upward from 85,466/219,549 (38.9%) in 2010 to 74,950/212,162 (35.3%) in 2014 (p-trend < .001). The Low-sodium Seasoning Rate showed a statistically higher trend from 0.07% (144/219,549) in 2010 to 0.18% (375/212,162) in 2014 (p-trend < .001). Furthermore, the Salt Seasoning Amount showed a gradual downward trend, from 0.86 g in 2010 to 0.81 g in 2014 (p-trend < .01). Conclusions: This study showed that the frequency and amount of adding salt to meals as seasonings had decreased gradually, and that of using low sodium ingredients has increased, which could reflect the increasing trend of a low-sodium diet and low-sodium food taking behavior.